Sayonara Wild Hearts

This game is absurdly confident and doesn’t give a crap what you think—and that’s one of the things that makes it so great. I came late to this game. I remember it being demoed at the Apple event, I remember seeing it all over the arcade page, it was hyped constantly at launch, and I wasn’t interested at all in what looked like subway surfers on acid. It turned it to be one of my favorite games of all time. Yep, a shiny, pink and teal, pulsing neon beacon sitting right next to borderlands, elder scrolls, the Witcher, and all those other AAA console titles sitting on my shelf. It’s so creative, the soundtrack is so great, it’s so simple, but it’s a game that you can get good at. Reminds me of something like those Dance Dance games in arcades or Guitar Hero: sure, it’s a game... but you can be a freaking BA at it if you play long enough. I also love the all-female cast, it gives the game something truly special that I really love and find incredibly refreshing as a guy. A seminal title from the developer and I DEMAND more from them in the future. Great work, y’all, no complaints or critique. And that’s incredibly rare for me.

Just the art of this game was enough to draw me in. This game is gorgeously designed! But it’s so much more than that. The music is fantastic, and is essential to the experience to the game. The mechanics are a meld of endless runner and rhythm game, with a bit of arcade shooter mixed in. There’s a sweet little story tying it all together too. At times it can be quite challenging as it throws many different things at you in quick succession, so fast you have to try some sections over again and again til you know them. But that’s also part of the joy - you can try a section as many times as you need (no forcing you to start from the very beginning again) or if a section is too hard you can just skip it. The experience is open to everyone, though completionists like myself will go back to try and achieve gold rank on levels, all while reveling in the experience.

While the format of the ‘visual album’ is well-known, I feel there have been far fewer ‘playable albums’. My favorite playable album used to be Rez, but this feels like an album in the best sense of the word: every level has a different idea, yet the work overall is cohesive and a pleasure to enjoy again and again. It’s remarkable how effortlessly Simogo takes disparate game mechanics (included a small homage to Rez!) and includes them all together in the levels with exquisite editing. Just as songs quickly transition between verses, choruses, bridges and instrumentals, so too do the game mechanics of Sayonara change up. But this kind of game would fall by the wayside were it not for the stellar soundtrack. The soundtrack is easily one of my favorite gaming soundtracks of all time. Listening to it on its own is very enjoyable, but playing the album in Sayonara is an altogether different experience, and utterly essential.

I was ready to give this game a 5 star review after the first “boss level” which was a long, intense, and multi phase experience that left me in awe. Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the entire game for me, as nothing else really lived up to it. The controls and art for this game are stellar and the aesthetic shines through in every aspect of the game from the menus to the music. This game is somewhat of a hybrid rhythm game experience, where you control your character as she flies down tracks and occasionally pulls off cool jumps in time with the music. The problem with this game is simply that the tracks are way, way too short. In rhythm games one of the appeals is entering the “flow” of the music and experiencing the combination of music and kinesthetic feedback of the video game. 2/3 of the levels in this game felt like they were less than a minute long and would often introduce a new idea and just move on without really expanding on it. By the time I felt myself mastering a mechanic it was dropped for a new idea. The boss levels were also disappointingly short in comparison to the first boss level. Overall it was a fun, interesting experience that left me wanting more. I’m interested in what this developer can do after the success of this game, and hope they can spend time fully fleshing out their creativity into a fully realized product. 4/5

Holy crap! This game is pretty good. The music is not too much of my taste but the visuals totally distract me from that. Everything is so bright and colorful and so cool to look at. The music and the visuals are very compatible with each other and I love it. I do have one small problem though. It’s the way you are allowed to move the character. Yes, I love how you can move very freely and the game does not restrict you. However, it feels stiff and to move the character around quickly to dodge projectiles can be rather hard and sometimes frustrating. I do like the fact that they give you the opinion to skip that section of the level if you get stuck. The story isn’t too hard to follow but if you lose the main plot of the story, head right to the first level and the description of the game in the App Store. I would like another thing like this game and I would like for it to be a bit longer please